The present invention relates to location-based service. More particularly, the present invention relates to a location-based service related to information or data searching around users.
Conventionally, people desire to know information related to surroundings. Location-based services are therefore happened on the Internet, WiFi or WiMax network, or other kinds of cellular networks. The conventional location-based services may position a user to get his/her location through various methods, such as GPS, AGPS and/or the third generation positioning, and provides daily information, travel information or advertisement information related to the user's location to the user. These kinds of conventional location-based services are usually provided by a system provider, for example, an operator of a cellular network who collects or stores these information and transmits these information through its communication system, or a location-based service provider, for example, a content provider such as a website who collects or generates these kinds of information.
As the amount of location-based information grows up, when a user want to get information he/she needs, to search for the information based on a query (probably including a keyword) and his/her location may become more and more important. However, to get a user's location, conventional positioning methods may include GPS or AGPS, a cellular network positioning including 3G and 3.5G, or a wireless network positioning. A PC, a laptop, a cellular phone, a GPS navigator, a personal digital assistant or other mobile terminals capable of being positioning may firstly be positioned to get the user's location, and then the user can use the abovementioned mobile terminals to get a location-based service he/she needs.
However, to position the abovementioned mobile terminals may cause delay before providing the location-based service (i.e. the location-based service is provided after the terminals are positioned). Moreover, much overhead such as to ranging the mobile terminals, to handshake with the system of the system provider, etc, may occur when running the location-based service through the system provider, the location-based service provider and the mobile terminals.
It may therefore be desirable to have a method of providing a location-based service which solve or eliminate problems or disadvantages as mentioned above, to facilitate users to search and/or get information about his/her surroundings.